


Me, you, and Mjölnir

by rabbitinthewoods



Series: Post pre-apocalyptic Sokivia [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Jane is Worthy, Mjolnir is semi sentient probably, Post-Battle of Sokovia, and Darcy has Plans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-30
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-19 05:39:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7347370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabbitinthewoods/pseuds/rabbitinthewoods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy waited an appropriate amount of time before announcing, with as much gravitas and volume as she could provide, “These are the hands of a king!”</p><p>Jane frowned. “Hand. You're only holding one. And can you please not shout?”</p><p>Darcy shook the hand she was holding. “Can you please not ruin my moment of glory?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Me, you, and Mjölnir

**Author's Note:**

> Cause I don't like the idea of Thor just up and vanishing and leaving Team Foster in the lurch all the time. So he doesn't. And Frigga isn't dead, because a) I love her and low-key hate Odin, b) writers need to stop killing women to further men's stories and, c) it's not like MCU is swimming in women anyway???

It was shaping up to be a good day, Darcy thought. Erik and Thor had cooked the four of them a big breakfast, full of grease and carbs and at least three rashers of turkey bacon each. Everything was feeling kind of lazy. Sunlight wasn’t so much _streaming_ through the big balcony windows as it was _falling_ , softly piling up behind the architecture of London in unbothered mounds, before, finally, it just kind of sloshed in like thick treacle. They were all in a state of semi-hibernation. Erik in his big green old-man armchair, Thor and her folded together on the sofa and Jane, too busy for cuddles, sat upright in a chair and trying to focus on an article about wormholes. Darcy was lazily prodding for information from Thor about his fight with the rock ‘em sock ‘em robots – a reference she then had to explain – when the whole ‘if they be worthy’ deal came up. It was _still_ shaping up to be a good day, Darcy thought, just also now a little surreal.

“I don't understand the big deal,” Jane said, as if her stupid perfect mouth forming such words was not, in essence, some kind of blasphemy against some kind of Asgardian god somewhere, probably.

“How are you like this?” Darcy asked. “You can do ridiculous space science, but ridiculous space politics is too much?”

“Space science – _astrophysics,_ damn it Darcy, that all makes sense. What about this makes sense?”

Darcy hoisted one of Jane’s gloved hands in the air. “Ok, first off, agree to disagree in the space science versus space politics debate –”

“Astrophysics, I know you know the word.”

“Whatever, and _second!_ Can I have a drumroll please?”

“You're holding my hand.”

“It's possible to drumroll one handed, Jane, god. And I didn't mean you, I meant Erik.” She turned to Erik, expectant. He sighed like the long suffering fake dad they all knew he was, but started a drumroll all the same. Darcy waited an appropriate amount of time before announcing, with as much gravitas and volume as she could provide, “These are the hands of a _king!_ ”

Jane frowned. “Hand. You're only holding one. And can you please not shout?”

Darcy shook the hand she was holding. “Can you please not ruin my moment of glory?”

“Your moment? I'm the one with the king hands here.”

“Yeah but you're not appreciating it properly, so I've got to do it for you.”

Jane frowned, probably knowing she couldn't argue with such ironclad logic. “Why king? I'm a woman.”

“Yeah but you'd be Thor, so it's a toss up between which gender would out.” Jane was still frowning at her, so she shrugged. “Space politics. Who knows. Thor?”

All three of them turned to look over at their resident authority on ‘space politics’, but he was still sat, as bemused as a kitten trying to comprehend calculus, with his chin in his hands and his gaze locked on where mew-mew rested, almost carelessly, in Jane’s other hand. He hadn't really said anything since Jane had spontaneously become king, now that Darcy thought about it. They should fix that.

With a measure of tact she generally only brought out for diplomats and small children, Darcy dropped Jane’s hand and said, “Does anybody fancy a drink?”

Nobody save Erik answered, who said ‘coffee’ in a voice that suggested he was just about ready to go sit on the balcony for a while and wonder how this became his life. So, coffee it was. Darcy got the machine filled up and working and set a mug out in front of each person in preparation. Two sugars for Jane, no milk, because she was a heathen, and then a dash of milk for everyone else, because they understood how coffee should be taken. Darcy watched as Jane took a few experimental swings with the hammer. Maybe she should say something, but the coffee wasn’t ready yet, and they might need the buffer of a warm drink before they moved forwards. Besides, she could see Thor’s face.

There was no suggestion of anger or frustration in his features. No wrinkled brow or scowling mouth. He just seemed kind of confused, in a soft, harmless way. Darcy couldn’t see him being anything more alarming than mildly troubled about the entire thing. If it had been some randomer picking up his mew-mew, sure, but this was _Jane_. She looked at Thor’s face again, and swore there was a smile emerging. They had time.

It wasn’t long until the coffee was ready, and Darcy doled it out in relative silence. Just the strange _thum_ of Jane swinging mew-mew back and forth and Erik’s occasional sigh to fill the room. Thor still had said nothing. Darcy considered her opening gambit.

“You mum’s still in charge of things in good ol’ Asgard, right?” She said, and watched as Thor pulled himself out of whatever quiet space he’d been occupying. She pushed his coffee into his hand, just to help him along a bit, and waited for a few seconds. “Still kinda dowager queen, right?” She added when it looked like he hadn’t found his way back to speech yet.

“Indeed,” Thor finally said, “this is so. Alongside Iðunn and Jörð she stands as All-Mother, since my father’s death. It is not so different to how Asgard was governed during times of Odinsleep.”

Darcy remembered this. “You mean when your old man went into a magically induced coma because sometimes sleep just isn’t enough?”

Thor paused. “Yes.”

“That’s some hard-core napping going on there.”

Thor nodded. Erik, in his raggedy high-backed 1920’s professor's chair, seemed to be considering the advantages of Eriksleep. Darcy could see it in the way he pursed his lips. Man had been through a lot of nonsense recently.

Jane had moved on from her practice swings and was now trying to inhale her coffee.

“Christ, Jane,” Darcy said, “you know some people like to _savour_ their drinks? And not burn their mouth? And breathe? Have you tried that?”

“It’s just coffee. It’s fuel. Why would I savour it?”

“Right. Not like it has a flavour or anything.”

Jane, displaying a regality that would serve her well in her new role as the monarch of a semi-immortal bunch of adrenaline-seeking bodybuilders, snorted. “Exactly.”

Darcy turned to Thor. “Is she quaffing? Is that quaffing? That’s good in Asgard, right? You guys like to quaff things.”

The slightest of grins was emerging on Thor’s face, which he promptly hid from view with his coffee cup. “No. Quaffing requires that most of the drink miss your mouth. My lady Jane is displaying the refined and valued ability, demonstrated among much of the warrior class, of drinking as much as possible in as short a space of time without unnecessary consideration for what is actually in one’s cup.”

“Right,” Jane said, and then, “what?”

From Erik’s venerable corner Darcy swore she could hear a series of select expletives, and, perhaps, some quiet laughter.

“He’s saying you’ll fit right in with all the jocks, Jane.”

Jane, bless her tiny, cotton, space themed socks, was frowning. “Thor’s not a jock.”

“It breaks my heart to tell you this, Jane, truly it does, but Thor is the jockiest of jocks. I mean, he’s awesome, I love him, sure, and he hasn’t got the dudebro mindset endemic to a lot of jocks. But he’s still a jock. I mean,” she reached out to poke briefly at one of Thor’s frankly ridiculous arms, “have you seen these muscles?”

“Muscles do not a jock make,” Jane muttered.

One hand pressed tightly to his forehead and the other maintaining a firm grip on his coffee cup, Erik sighed again. “He enjoys lifting up successfully heavier objects for bets.”

Jane scowled. “That doesn’t –”

“He has a series of stories about his ‘adventures’ which are really just tales of ill-advised, thrill seeking lunacy.”

“But –”

“He talks smack,” Darcy felt compelled to add, “like, a lot.”

Thor held up a finger. “I also enjoy a wide variety of physical activities, ranging from sports to a casual tavern brawl.”

“Now hold on,” Jane said, waving her arms around in an effort to gain some quiet. The _thum_ of mew-mew seemed judgemental, somehow. “ _I_ do all those things, and I’m not a jock!”

And she did, Darcy knew. Even the last one. Jane had an unsettling tendency to run when she thought science was calling her, which was nearly all the time. She would also, without fail, get involved in fisticuffs over ‘important astrophysical theories, Darcy, I can’t just let that kind of bullshit theoretical slander slide’, which had led to her being unofficially banned from getting within 50 meters of her scientific peers on more than one occasion. Darcy now had to bribe Samantha Carter with promises of pancakes before the woman would even stand in the same room as Jane.

There was only one conclusion Darcy could therefore reach. “Jane, _Jane_ , I hate to tell you this –”

Jane, obviously seeing where Darcy was going, tried to shout her down. “No. No, Darcy, don’t you dare.”

“Jane, you’re –”

“Darcy!”

“– a jock, Jane.”

“I haven’t even got muscles!”

They all paused for a second.

“I thought ‘muscles did not a jock make’.” Darcy said. “You’re going to be a terrible queen if you can’t maintain consistency over even five minutes.”

“She’s not going to be queen,” Erik said, “you said yourself that Frigga is currently ruling Asgard.”

Geez, didn’t space geeks know anything? “Right, and Jörð and Iðunn.” Darcy was proud of her pronunciation: she’d been practicing. “But she’s only dowager queen – you know, the widow of a ruling monarch? The only reason she’s in charge is cause Thor doesn’t want to be. She isn’t _actually_ in the line of succession. Part of the reason she had to bring on Jörð and Iðunn to help her was with claims of legitimacy, otherwise some other relative of Odin could just step up and say ‘well really I should be in charge if Thor isn’t, blah blah blah’.”

“You’re presuming, I suppose, that Asgardian rules of succession are anything like that on Earth?” Erik said.

Darcy scoffed. “I’m not presuming! I don’t presume! I _know_ , cause I asked about it. What am I, a naive undergrad?” She’d done her research, damn it, and she knew her stuff. Seriously, she could easily set up a exopolitics course, starting with “Asgard 101: Forsooth, Aliens Are A Thing”. Perhaps a follow up would be “Why the Hell Do They All Speak Perfect English?”, guest starring the Asgardian equivalent of a linguist and one of those uncomfortable videos of vocal folds at work. She loved those videos.

“Ah, but,” Erik said, wagging a finger at her, “Jane isn’t related to Thor either.”

“Duh, obviously. But she has mew-mew. She doesn’t need a blood claim. The swishy mallet means she has ‘the power of Thor’, including all his non-muscle related powers like being the heir-apparent.” She’d checked that too. Besides what Thor had told them that morning, she’d already gotten some details from Romanoff. Her favourite international woman of mystery had been only too willing to talk on the matter, in exchange for the latest gossip on which astrophysicist Jane had fought most recently. Darcy was convinced there was some kind of betting pool going.

Thor was biting at his lip in a way that Darcy knew meant he was tempted to talk about how mew-mew wasn’t a mallet, but some kind of ridiculous star-forged-metal hammer thing, but was just about holding back. Good. The last time he’d done that, Darcy had stared him out before saying ‘a mallet is a hammer, big boy’, and then demonstrated her point with some knives to represent tent pegs. She had obviously won the debate. He was learning.

She continued. “Although she’d have to compete with Stark’s new android kid. Presuming they wanted the throne. I can’t really see it, they’re not even a year old, but you never know. Also Vision is an unbelievable name –”

“So you’ve said, Darcy,” Erik mumbled from his old-man chair.

“I know, but, like, what kind of go-hard-or-go-home attitude does someone who names themselves ‘Vision’ have?”

“This is the fifth time you’ve brought this up,” Jane pointed out, “and I don’t want to be queen anymore than Vision does. It would get in the way of my work.”

Darcy sighed. This was the problem with all eleven of her ‘How we could rule Asgard by year’s-end’ plans. Jane’s unbelievable apathy. She probably didn’t even want to _hit_ anything with mew-mew unless she thought it would aid scientific advancement.

Darcy considered briefly the fallout of Jane hitting another astrophysicist over some _theory_ with a weapon that saw things like steel as a nuisance and was, at the very least, semi-sentient. Beside her and across the room, she could see Thor and Erik considering the same thing.

“You know what,” she said, “you’re right. It really would get in the way.”

Thor nodded. “The duties of ruling are many, and leave little time for aught else.”

“Of course, you would have unlimited access to all of Asgard’s scientific advancements.” Erik said, looking pensively into the middle-distance.

Both Darcy and Thor glared at him. Jane hefted mew-mew again and frowned and the quiet _thum_. Did it sound like an entreaty? A tempting whisper? Darcy coughed.

Erik got with the program, and hurried to correct himself. “But of course, given that you are, uh, dating the son of the current ruling monarch, obstructions would probably only be minimal as it is.”

“Indeed.” Thor stood, coffee cup empty and abandoned on the table, and moved around until he could press a hand to Jane’s shoulder. “My mother is fond of you, and would not think to deny you anything so long as Asgard was not put in danger by it.”

“Astrophysics has never put _anyone_ in danger,” Jane said, with a convincing amount of sincerity considering it was a filthy, filthy lie. “Can I still try the flying though? And the lightning? Considering Mjölnir’s origins it would be fascinating to conduct some preliminary research into how stars, of all things, could be used in weaponsmithing. It’s not traditional astrophysics, but...”

Darcy tuned them out as the discussion turned to space science and magic, which, really, was probably just science with glitter and airs of grandeur. Although if she was honest that might describe a lot of non-magic science. But she wasn’t going to be the one to point that out. Yet. Maybe. If it came up she might. She pondered the best way to slide it as effortlessly and as devastatingly as possible into a potential conversation as she collected empty coffee cups and stuck them in the sink.

It was a shame, in a way, about the whole ‘Queen Jane’ thing. She’d been looking forward to being the power behind the throne. Or at least being the _political savvy_ behind the throne: the magic space mallet was obviously the power. But the whole thing would probably have given Erik a hernia. And Darcy would have spent most of her time trying to drag Jane out of various Asgardian libraries and labs and to ridiculous banquets, where she would utterly fail to quaff appropriately. So, really, it was probably for the best. Even though the idea of Jane as some Norse goddess was still cool. Darcy tapped a finger against her chin. She might still be able to swing that.

“Hey, Erik.” She waited until he’d turned to her, momentarily distracted from making a fierce point on the stability of hydrogen fusion, blah blah blah, before she carried on. “Is there an ancient Norse goddess of space science?”

“Space science? No, no, there’s a goddess of the sun, well, who _is_ the sun, really, and a god who is the moon. But no space scie– no _astrophysics_ , or astronomy, or anything of the sort jumps to mind really.”

Having gotten her phone out as soon as she’d heard him say _no,_ Darcy was already well into her research. “Okay, so how does Stjarnadis sound as a potential name? Or...Distjarna? Which way round would you stick those elements? Probably the first, right?”

Erik, the goof, tried to reply but lost himself in laughter. Jane gave him a wide-eyed stare before turning to Darcy, wanting an explanation.

Darcy was only too happy to oblige. “I’m thinking of your Asgardian name.”

“What?”

“Shh, shhhhh, just go along with it. You need a name if you’re joining the Norse pantheon.”

“Star-goddess,” Thor whispered, and Darcy was sure she wasn’t the only one who heard mew-mew hum in approval. “An unusual name. Stjarna is not a common choice.”

“I know a Stjärnstråle,” Erik said, “but not as a given name.”

Darcy wasn’t going to stand for this. “I don’t hear any of you offering any suggestions.”

“Perhaps because I don’t _need_ a Norse name, Darcy,” Jane said. Which was the most foolish thing she could have said. Of course she needed one. Who had ever heard of a Norse goddess named Jane? No-one, that was who.

“You can wield the mallet, and you like science.” She shrugged. “I don’t know what you were expecting.” Mew-mew went _thum_ again. Darcy could almost picture it nodding. “See? Mew-mew agrees with me. What are you going to do, argue with a mallet? A _space_ mallet?”

“She’s not a _space mallet_ , don’t be crass.” Jane said.

“That’s not a no.” She was already halfway there to convincing Jane, she could tell. She waited, and Erik and Thor followed her lead.

Jane, conflicted, swung mew-mew around by her leather loop. Finally, she said, “Star goddess seems a bit reductive.”

“There is no Old Norse word for ‘astrophysics’, Jane,” Erik pointed out, “or even just ‘space’. Star is as good as you’re going to get.” You couldn’t argue with that kind of reasonable logic. Well, you _could_ , both of them had, often, and with vigour, and to Erik’s everlasting consternation. But it would be an uphill struggle.

“But I’m not a god.”

“None of us are,” Thor said. “We are Aesir, and Vanir, and Jotun. Though none would easily admit to the latter. And now we are an android and a human.”

“A human sometimes called Stjarnadis,” Darcy said, decided on the order.

“And sometimes called Jane,” Erik said, which was a stamp of approval all its own.

Mjölnir went _thum thum THUM_ , despite being perfectly still in Jane’s grip, and Thor broke into a radiant grin. Jane joined him, slower, her fingers brushing against his, mew-mew caught between them. This was, Darcy thought, exactly what triumph looked like. Space politics, who’d have thought?

She could totally get a job as an ambassador to Asgard, right? She should revise her plans.


End file.
